Product Design, Manufacturing & Innovation Resources

DSN Now

Live Monitoring & Tracking

Free
No Download/Install required
No registration

https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/dsn-now/dsn.html

DSN Now is the NASA JPL live display of the Deep Space Network, the antenna complexes at Goldstone in California, Madrid in Spain and Canberra in Australia that communicate with spacecraft beyond Earth orbit. The page shows each antenna and the spacecraft it is currently tracking.

For each active link it lists the spacecraft name, the signal direction, the data rate, the signal power and the frequency band, together with the distance from Earth and the round trip light time. Links are updated every few seconds, so a connection that starts or ends during observation can be seen as it happens.

Our view: unique. Feel top scientists! Live observation or monitoring, a bit of OSINT and a lot of technology behind.

The tool is well suited to see which missions are active at the moment, from Voyager and Mars rovers to lunar and solar observers, and to understand scheduling and range delay in deep space communication. It is free, needs no registration and shows the status of the network, not the content of the transmissions.

Disciplines: Space engineering, Telecommunications, Astronomy, Education, Aerospace engineering.

Free alternative to Heavens-Above, N2YO.

DSN Now compared with Heavens-Above and N2YO
DSN Now	Heavens-Above	N2YO
Objects covered: NASA Deep Space Network antennas and the spacecraft they currently communicate with, from missions beyond Earth orbit. It shows the state of the network, not satellites seen from your location.	Objects covered: Satellites passing over a chosen observer location, including the ISS, which has a dedicated page with predictions for the next 10 days.	Objects covered: Satellites above or passing a chosen observer location, with tracking and prediction functions exposed in several API endpoints.
Information shown: Which antennas are active, which spacecraft they track, the data rate, the distance, and how long a signal takes to travel to and from the spacecraft. Selecting an antenna opens more technical details of the live link.	Information shown: Predictions of visible passes tailored to the observer location and time zone.	Information shown: API endpoints named Above, Positions, Radio Passes, TLE and Visual Passes, covering optical and radio pass predictions and two-line element data.
	Data basis: Orbital parameters are downloaded daily from Space Track, a website run by the US Air Force Space Command.	Data basis: Tracking uses space surveillance data from Space Track, operated by the US Air Force Space Command.
Access and automation: Web display of live status. The page describes the data as real time but does not state a refresh interval.		Access and automation: Web tracking plus an API using key authentication under a freemium model. The rate limit values were not visible on the page consulted.